Bak's TV Week: Torchwood

"That's what Torchwood does you see, it ruins your life." A bit of an over-the-top reaction from resident Torchwooder Gwen, but it did waste a whole five hours of my life last week when Torchwood: Children of Earth hit BBC prime time. That's five hours I'll never get back; five hours of head-scratching as I tried to puzzle out who exactly this sci-fi tosh is aimed at.

 

And that's long been the problem with this confused Doctor Who spin-off, in which a team of aggressively Welsh men and woman – and John Barrowman – cuss, flirt and shag their way through save-the-world storylines so absurd they'd make the writers of Heroes blush.

 

"It's definitely not for children," the continuity man tells us before Friday's (admittedly pretty dark) finale kicks off. And he's right. Within minutes, we've got our first unnecessary 'sh*t' of the evening, and a plot-line which sees the truly mesmerising Peter Capaldi shoot his young family in their suburban home before taking his own life. Grim stuff indeed.

 

Nor, surely, does Torchwood appeal to adults. For while Doctor Who is a show marketed squarely and unashamedly at kids, it successfully marries this with appeal to the nostalgia nerve centres of a million 30-somethings the nation over.

 

Torchwood, however, lacks the good Doctor's magic. It's therefore baffling to me why a show which, to all intents and purposes is a kids' show, is hell-bent on courting the adult audience with a few naughty words and a bit of bromance which, if toned down ever so slightly, would allow Torchwood to pass easily as pre-watershed sci-fi schlock.

 

Torchwood - For Brians Only?

So who's watching it then? I can only assume its viewing figures are comprised mainly of lonely, bearded men with names like Brian and Kevin; men who long for a return to the glory of Doctor Who's Tom Baker era, and who complained to the BBC when Catherine Tate was announced as the Doctor's assistant. Men who Skype each other to discuss in flat monotones the relative merits of Buffy the film and Buffy the TV series. That's right: geeks.

 

But, more importantly, was Children of Earth any good? Well, it was… ok. Not an abominable waste of licence-fee-payers' money, nor a groundbreaking piece of sci-fi genius in the vein of, say, er, Doctor Who's Tom Baker era.

 

Indeed, if it hadn't been for all-over-the-place comedy duo Rhys and Gwen, it might even have been quite good. I mean, how are we supposed to be gripped when those two are bumbling around doing their Laurel and Hardy thing all the time? How are we supposed to care that the world is ending while they're still in it?

 

Peter Capaldi on the other hand was an inspired piece of casting. As guilt-ridden civil servant John Frobisher – a desperate man driven to desperate deeds – he practically carried the whole programme. John Barrowman – and I never thought I'd say this – John Barrowman wasn't bad either, bringing out a darker side to the Captain Jack character than we'd seen in previous series.

 

And so, we leave this five-hour marathon with Ianto Jones dead and Cap'n Jack vanishing into space after sacrificing his own grandson for the sake of the human race. What next for the troubled series? Well, if they can kill off Gwen and Rhys, bring back Capaldi, and do away with all this swearing nonsense, they may just be onto something. Until then, Torchwood remains the same old space cr*p it always was; a show for geeks of a certain age only.

 

Top Of The Class

 

It's not many shows that can breathe new life into a tired old format (see Big Brother series 10), but ITV's fourth series of Ladette To Lady has succeeded in doing just that. In much the same way as creators of The Simpsons realised after a few series that Homer – not Bart – was the true star of the show, it seems that ITV has finally realised the true value of Eggleston Hall's teachers: Gill Harbord, Rosemary Shrager and Liz Brewer.

 

This year's ladettes were a bunch of Aussie ne'er-do-wells: drinkers, brawlers, strippers and slags. No change there then. But, after four years of the same old thing, viewers have become hardened to the kind of adolescent tomboy behaviour displayed by the girls, and a fresh angle was required. And, with the teachers as the stars, that angle was found, allowing the show to soar to whole new levels of hilarity.

 

Take cookery teacher and vice principal Rosemary Schrager, for example, whose final test for the girls was to create the kind of caramel and profiterole tower you might have expected to find at a bad 80s tea party. "The critical appraisal has been rigorous," she barked as she gave a cursory glance to the horrific creations of finalists Nicole, Kristin and Skye. And the tension in the room was palpable. But then this is a woman so formidable that, with the aid of a simple hand-held school bell, she can even make waking up in the morning an ordeal.

Shrager gets to say things to the girls like: "Do you believe in discipline now?" She is, in short, a relic of another era. And one we should be grateful to have on our TV screens. Then there's Miss Brewer, etiquette teacher, a birdlike creature whose manners eluded her completely when, in an earlier episode, she called Skye "A little piece of scum." To her face. Now that's class.

 

Principal Gill Harbord is, however, in a league all of her own. Quite apart from looking like something you might expect to find in an ancient tomb in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harbord walks the tightrope of tough love with the kind of skill that you could only pick up from hundreds of years of working in girls' finishing schools.

 

From offering the girls "a little Vermouth" when they visit her office, to perfecting a pink-lipsticked scowl that would turn the most hardened criminal weak at the knees with fear, draconian Harbord is fast becoming a TV legend in her own lifetime. I think I even saw a tear in her eye when the girls finally graduated last week. Perhaps she is human after all.

 

But I won't let a little thing like that put me off. Let's hope that next year ITV removes the ladettes from the equation altogether – give Harbord and Schrager their own talk show instead. Or, better still, let them loose on some real criminal hardnuts. They might just make Britain a safer place to live.

 

Quotes Of The Week

 

"In the past the number was so small that it didn't matter." - Torchwood's Cap'n Jack attempts to play down his child-trafficking past. And fails.

 

"Who's got kids? Find me a kid now!" - Peter Capaldi does his best Gary Glitter impersonation.

 

"We've been through worse before." - Cap'n Jack makes a plea to the viewers to keep watching.

 

"Doo-dah." Torchwood-speak for 'toilet roll'. - Pity they can't use this kind of language when it comes to the real swearing.

Bak On TV

Read more of Stuart Bak's TV reviews in our Couch Potato archive. Do you agree with Stu's opinions? Disagree? Drop him a line on bakontv@hotmail.co.uk